I'll be off the grid for a few days. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for the Lagunas route into Chile. I spent most of the day today trying to coordinate a gasoline drop at a place called Laguna Colorada. Hopefully when we show up there in a day or so, there will be a 30 liter jug of gasoline waiting for us. It's one of the more complicated things I've tried to do in Spanish, so we'll see how it goes. I'll probably be gone for about three days, mas o menos.

I'll be off the grid for a few days. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for the Lagunas route into Chile. I spent most of the day today trying to coordinate a gasoline drop at a place called Laguna Colorada. Hopefully when we show up there in a day or so, there will be a 30 liter jug of gasoline waiting for us. It's one of the more complicated things I've tried to do in Spanish, so we'll see how it goes. I'll probably be gone for about three days, mas o menos.

Until then, cheers!

Bryce

Not really needed. Pretty much any of tours going through L. Colorado will sell you gas. Buen viaje.

__________________Riding the Americas: No Fumar Español_____________________________________________

You must be having a blast out there in the middle of nowhere! I'm not worrried but have to admit I'm used to checking in every couple days or so to see how you've been making out and it's weird not seeing anything new. On Spot I see you've been moving along toward la Laguna Colorado heading south very close to the border of Chile, looks like you're taking a break now since you haven't moved much in the last hour. Espero que todo este bien. Que Dios lo guíe!

__________________
Let's ride!!! - No offense, but there've been a lot of people over time who were just as sure, yet got it wrong. - Una necedad, aunque la repitan millones de bocas, no deja de ser una necedad. - "you know that I could have me a million more friends and all I'd have to lose is my point of view" (Prine)

I just made it into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Hell of a ride. Probably the best part of the trip so far, despite the crashes, broken stuff, lost stuff, swallowing gasoline, and outright bribery. I'm going to start uploading pictures; hopefully I'll have the blow by blow account posted soon.

I just made it into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Hell of a ride. Probably the best part of the trip so far, despite the crashes, broken stuff, lost stuff, swallowing gasoline, and outright bribery. I'm going to start uploading pictures; hopefully I'll have the blow by blow account posted soon.

Cheers,

Ulyses

I'm just going to venture a guess that not swapping the front tire to a knobby has something to do with the crashes, and that your rack broke again. Lost stuff, I don't know. Swallowing gasoline, maybe using the XR-Valdez to re-fuel someone?

I just made it into San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Hell of a ride. Probably the best part of the trip so far, despite the crashes, broken stuff, lost stuff, swallowing gasoline, and outright bribery. I'm going to start uploading pictures; hopefully I'll have the blow by blow account posted soon.

Cheers,

Ulyses

Be careful with the swallowing fuel bud, my grandfathers friend died siphoning gas after swallowing a little.

When most people ride from Unuyi to Chile, they typically cross the Salar and then head due South along a series of high lakes or lagoons into the very south western corner of Bolivia before jumping across the border and coasting down the pavement into Chile. Unfortunately, since the Salar was flooded, we would have to skip that part of the route and head straight for the Lagoons. I wasn't exactly clear on the route and really needed to see a map to visualize where we were going. Furthermore, Mike and I needed a prep day to south things out, plan the route, organize logistics, and prepare our bikes. So we decided to do just that: have a prep day.

We divided the labor. Mike would take care of route planning and GPS computer wizardry, while I would run around town and take care of the logistics portion.

My first task was to find a tour operator who would be willing to cache gasoline for us somewhere along the route. According to our best estimates and, from what people had told us, the route we were looking at would be somewhere between 250-325 miles long. There would only be one for sure place to fill up with fuel along the route: a small town called San Cristobal approximately 50 miles outside of Unuyi. You can buy gas from some of the Land Cruisers that are toting tourists around; however, we didn't want to pay a premium on gas and figured it would be fairly easy to have someone just drop off a can of gas for us along the route.

There are tons of tour operators working out Unuyi. For a couple hundred Bolivianos, they take backpackers and tourists on three day excursions in Land Cruisers across the Salar and down through the Lagoons. I spent most of the morning walking around trying to find one who would do what we wanted. It actually proved to be fairly difficult. Eventually I narrowed it down to a few companies: Estrella del Sur, Cordillera, and Mistica. Cordillera offered to do it the cheapest (10 Bolivianos, or, approximately $1.30), so I settled on them.

I went to a hardware store and bought a 30 liter jug, filled it up at the gas station, then dropped it off at the tour agency office.

Coordinating the fuel cache was probably one of the more complicated things I've done in Spanish, but eventually we worked it out and the driver assured me that he would drop the gas off at a hotel near Laguna Colorada the next evening. Relatively confident that things were set up correctly, I headed over to the car wash and had the rest of the Salar rinsed off of my bike.

I returned to the Hotel and found that Mike had downloaded a whole new set of maps for our GPS's and found a bunch of waypoints on an overlander website. Due to the crappy internet at the hotel, he had spent all day trying to download a few megabites of information.

We finished off the day by going to the mercado and buying supplies: two boxes of spaghetti, a few cans of tomato sauce, vegetables, instant oatmeal, tuna, bread, mayo, toilet paper, and eight snickers bars. I would soon come to regret only buying eight snickers bars....